AuthorTopic: Individual Power Plant Articles (Read 3489 times)

i took a break from this game for a while, but i've started playing some again and began writing a bunch more. i thought it would be neat if this game had something like the twilight strategy site, which has an article for each card in that game. thus i began doing comprehensive articles for each plant in power grid!

i tend to cover a lot of different topics...auction values, resource management, opening builds with starting plants, longer-term strategies for endgame plants, you name it! each article has separate sections for 2-player and multiplayer games, although i also break down the differences between 3-6 players in the multiplayer section. i really try to show situational uses for much-maligned plants such as the 11, 07, and even 06 (yes, it's not worthless!). even i can't put lipstick on the 14, though!

i am doing these in numerical order and am currently up to the infamous 20. currently these are hosted on my personal blog that i wasn't using before, at http://maninmotiongoingnowhere.wordpress.com/ . if adam is interested in posting these on his site, i would be more than down once i finish all of them! hoping to accomplish that by the end of this week, and don't want it to take much longer than that at worst.

feel free to dicuss here, and hope you enjoy =)

EDIT: just made a huge update to the plant 18 article, with a lot more info on plants that work well with the mid-tier greens!

I'd be happy to post them on the Power Grid Strategy blog, for sure. I imagine it might be best to group similar plants together and put them into one "article" so that there could be maybe 4-5 "articles" or something like that.

that would be cool, although some of these are quite long in their own right! here's my idea for grouping...

THE STARTING PLANTS:

03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,13

THE EARLY "MOVING THE MARKET" PLANTS:

11, 12, 15, 16 (06/07/09 all fit in here to some degree but easier to stick them above)

THE MID-TIER GREEN PLANTS:

18, 22, 27

THE EARLY 4-CAPS:

21, 24, 28, 29

THE EARLY 5-CAPS:

20, 25, 26

THE EARLY 6-CAPS:

30, 31, 32

THE RARE EARLY JUGGERNAUTS:

33, 34, 35

THE STEP 3 STAPLES:

36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46, 50

THE BOTTOM TIER:

14, 17, 19, 23

the idea behind the "rare early juggernauts" one is that 33-35 appear before Step 3 significantly more often than anything higher will. i've seen this happen for each of those plants in at least 5 games, while i've seen 36 once and 39 once before Step 3.

I like this. Perhaps it would be educational to group THE BOTTOM TIER and THE EARLY "MOVING THE MARKET" PLANTS together so you can say a few words on what makes them fall into each of those categories, maybe some other similar things.

It's true I haven't played much 2P Power Grid, it's good to have a different perspective on that.

It's kind of sad, though, I haven't played much Power Grid in quite a while. It seems that making this blog has made me like the game less, much like I suspect is what happened with theory and Dominion

Also: with a completely new map and completely rebalanced plants coming for the 10th anniversary... this might suddenly become less interesting.

There is a "new" power plant deck that you can buy, but we tried playing with it and decided we didn't really like it. The plants are too efficient so the game becomes much simpler and easier, and our group didn't care for it. I would really hope that if new plants are going to be released that they will be worth playing with.

regarding the expansion power plant deck, my old roommate (the one who kept kicking my ass in 2P) owned it so we have a decent amount of experience with it. we ended up not liking it much at all, either.

my issue with the 2nd deck is that the early-mid 5-cap plants absolutely suck. well, the hybrid one that takes 3 resources might be OK, but 3 trash for 5? bleh. this makes the game favor efficiency too much in my view; i think early efficiency already may have been the most consistent winning strategy in 3-4 player games with the original deck, so this was not the direction they needed to go. the original deck presents interesting decisions since you have godlike 5-caps to go along with the 4-caps that print money, and this element is largely gone in the expansion deck.

another problem with the earlier 5-caps is that you have a snowball's chance in hell of seeing a 6-cap before Step 3 with the 2nd deck. the lowest-numbered 6 plant is 34, which is equivalent to the old 36 since you have plants 01 & 02 here. as mentioned, i've seen 36 appear once before Step 3 in ~650 games. this means that you can't punish players overpaying for efficiency by getting a cheap 5 & 6 before Step 3, the way you could with the original deck's 30-32.

furthermore, i feel that the big Step 3 plants are too efficient/safe in the 2nd deck. in the original deck you had 50 & 39 as sure things, 38 & 40 as usually strong options (though you have to pay big for the former), and lots of question marks after that. the 2nd deck just doesn't have a double-edged sword quite like the original 36, which makes the late auctions far easier & less interesting. there is one fewer 7-cap in the 2nd deck if you play without the "bonus" plants, which i'm torn on; that's about the only thing that keeps turn order important for the Step 3 auctions, but it also makes the game come down more to luck at the end. the winner in these games tends to be the one who got a cheap 4-cap with good early-mid "sidekick" plants (or another good 4-cap), one of the million good 6-caps in Step 3, and a 7-cap when one happened to drop.

Also: with a completely new map and completely rebalanced plants coming for the 10th anniversary... this might suddenly become less interesting.

There is a "new" power plant deck that you can buy, but we tried playing with it and decided we didn't really like it. The plants are too efficient so the game becomes much simpler and easier, and our group didn't care for it. I would really hope that if new plants are going to be released that they will be worth playing with.

No, I was talking about the new-new power plants, in the Power Grid Deluxe that will be coming out in a month or two.

Would you mind if I published a copy of these articles on the Power Grid Strategy blog (with a reference to where you put yours, of course)? If you wanted that, it would help me if you sent me an E-mail with the code you used (at least for the front page with all of the images).

Or I can just link on the PGS blog to where you posted yours if you'd prefer. You've put enough work into this that I think it deserves to be published, even if I don't agree word-for-word with what you have to say on the 03 plant It seems everything else you have to say is pretty accurate and your perspective is something I think should be put out there.

i also updated the Plant 03 article with a little extra info, which i thought of thanks to adam's comment. basically, if 07 is bought as a starting plant, 03 becomes pretty awful and i wouldn't want it anymore. that may explain why others don't like it...07 tends to go ignored in my online games, but if it's popular in your group then you are right to stay away from 03!